


Another Gosh-Dang Mystery

by drneroisgod



Category: Gravity Falls, H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Humor, Mystery, Setting: between escape velocity and dreadnought, Setting: two years post-gravity falls, everyone is fourteen or fifteen, in other words
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29414217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drneroisgod/pseuds/drneroisgod
Summary: People are going missing in Gravity Falls. Dipper and Mabel return to the Mystery Shack for the summer expecting another vacation filled with adventures and excitement—but all that is put on hold as they search the forest for Soos's Abuelita. At the same time, Otto Malpense is in Gravity Falls searching for G.L.O.V.E.'s deadliest assassin: Raven. The Pines family and the H.I.V.E. crew must join forces to get to the bottom of these disappearances... but will they solve the mystery in time to save their friends?
Kudos: 4





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been writing HIVE fics for ten years and Gravity Falls fics for a day and a half so.... that explains that.

Fastened to the peeling brown paint of the rest stop was a laminated sign that read, “OUT OF ORDER. RESTROOMS AVAILABLE AT THE ICE RINK ACROSS THE STREET. ENJOY YOUR STAY IN GRAVITY FALLS!”

Raven shuffled around the outbuilding—the other door shared the same weatherbeaten sign. Small-town America: it had its charms, didn’t it? Sighing, Raven climbed back into her Subaru. Gunning across the worn asphalt street and circling the lot faster than was strictly legal, she scanned the cars for suspicious figures. She was fairly confident that she had lost her last tail before she crossed the border, but after a lifelong career in murder, her healthy paranoia was the main reason she was still alive. She parked on the far side of the lot near the picnic tables, where it would be difficult to see the car from the street. Then, she hit the lock function on the fob, twice. She had her swords in the back, and it would be such a bother if they were taken.

A few families milled in in the parking lot—parents yelling pleasantries at one another through the rolled down windows of their pickup trucks and kids hoisting their hockey sticks over their overfull duffels. Raven smiled at them awkwardly as she opened the door to the rink and slipped inside. She could never decide what made her more forgettable: the smile, or its absence.

Mercifully, the restroom was empty, but there was a commotion on the rink as she left. A boy with white hair was yelling; she couldn’t help but watch.

The boy hollered, “McGucket, you old fool!” 

Dancing on a single ice skate and what appeared to be the severed head of a push broom, McGucket, an old, old man, held the boy’s hockey stick over his head. “You can’t have it! It’s one of my inventions!”

“Give it back!” The boy shouted. “Why, if I were eight inches taller, I’d—”

McGucket laughed with the squeal of rusty screws and used the hockey stick to swipe the boy’s feet out from under him.

Raven must have looked startled because one of the other bystanders turned to her and said, “Don’t worry, McGucket’s harmless. He just gets excitable about things. Gideon’ll right himself without so much as a bruise.”

“Oh,” Raven said, wishing she hadn’t lingered so long. “Well, as long as they know what they’re doing.”

The man adjusted his straw hat and grinned. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

Raven shrugged. “No,” she agreed. “I’m not. Are you?”

When the man looked at the sound of a clatter on the ice, Raven slipped out from the throng and back into the outdoors. People. Somehow, they managed to be everywhere. 

Raven rolled her shoulders as she walked, stiff from the drive. She already knew that she wouldn’t have time to finish her leftover pizza on one of the picnic benches before resuming her trip—Nero would expect her call at the next check-in site in five hours, and she didn’t have time to lollygag. 

_Natalya._

She heard a voice, but not quite with her ears. Raven stared at the forest, bold and green, but it was completely still.

_Natalya._

It was odd, but not sinister. The whispers reminded her of how she’d imagined her mother’s voice when she was a child. They almost sounded like a homecoming. Raven felt for her keys in her pocket. Still there. A cool breeze ruffled the pine needles and then her hair. 

_Natalya._

It wouldn’t hurt to look, would it? 

She did not think to glance behind her as she disappeared into the trees. It didn’t matter. There was no one to see her go.

xXx

On the other side of Gravity Falls, in a different neck of the woods, the Mystery Shack was open for business—but aside from a 1965 _Diablo_ , there were no cars in the lot.

Wendy slouched behind the counter, as always, and barely looked up as the bell over the door rang. “Hi, welcome to the Mystery Shack,” she intoned robotically.

Stan Pines cleared his throat. “Is that any way to greet the big boss?”

“Mr. Pines!” Wendy hopped over the counter and administered a warm side-hug before Stan could even think to protest. Behind them, Ford lurked in the doorway. “And Mr. Pines! You’re home!”

“You got that right, kid,” Stan replied. “How was your last year in high school?”

“All right,” Wendy shrugged. “How was the Bermuda Triangle?”

Stan shrugged. “All right.”

“I don’t know how you can say that,” Ford snipped, dropping his bags with a heavy thud. “We sighted more anomalies than we could record, practically a new one every day! Did you know that there are sea urchins with teleportation properties, and seagulls with octopus tentacles? Octogulls, for short. I’ve already started a new journal—”

“There were monsters, and all he wanted to do was write about ‘em,” Stan said, rolling his eyes. “Day and night, night and day. But I’ll tell you what, Wendy, as interesting as it was, it’s good to be home again.”

Wendy smiled. “Well, I know one person who will be glad to see you. Hey, Soos! Stan is here!”

“MISTER PINES!” Soos burst from the back room and threw himself into Stan’s arms. “You’re home!”

“It’s, uh, nice to see you, too, Soos,” Stan said, doing his best to politely extricate himself from Soos’s embrace and failing. “How’s the old place holding up?”

“Oh, it’s been mostly good,” Soos replied, his hand shadowing his cheerful face as he wiped at the sweat under his fez. “Really good! Or, well, it was.”

Stan stepped beyond Soos to look at a new display: the skeleton of a deer posing against the south wall. “Soos!” he barked. “What’s with this skeleton? All the bones are in the right places. No wonder business is bad. How are you gonna make any money with an attraction like that?”

“Lots of kids like the antlers,” Soos said. “And there’s something else.”

Stan and Ford exchanged skeptical looks.

“It’s not Soos’s fault,” Wendy said. She swiped a newspaper from the counter and presented it to the brothers. Ford took the paper and rattled it open. On the front page, a headline read, “NINTH DISAPPEARANCE REPORTED AFTER SIDESHOW TOUR.”

“Toby Determined.” Ford’s mouth twitched with disapproval. “The man couldn’t see a dangling modifier if it bit him on the—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Stan bristled. “But what does it say?”

Ford’s frown grew deeper as he skimmed the article, but it was Wendy who answered.

“People are going missing,” she said. “Nine so far. Some are tourists or hikers, and even some townspeople. You know Lazy Susan?”

Stan gasped. “No, not Lazy Susan!” 

“They haven’t found any bodies yet,” Ford reported. “So we don’t need to panic, yet.”

Soos wrung his wrists unhappily. “The last one disappeared after leaving a tour here at the Mystery Shack,” he said. “It’s made people nervous.”

“Well, that’s a load of hooey,” Stan said firmly. “It’s a good thing I’m here. We’ll get business back up and running in no time. We might even stage another disappearance. Keep things interesting.”

“I don’t know, Stan.” Ford set the newspaper on top of his bags. “I want to do some investigating. This seems serious. And with the kids coming up next week—”

“They’ll be fine,” Stan insisted. 

“Besides, Dipper might like to investigate, too,” Soos added. He gasped, suddenly. “Where are my manners? Abuelita has spent all day baking you a welcome home pie. You must come to the kitchen immediately.”

“But—” Ford looked outside longingly.

Stan grabbed his brother’s shoulder and began pushing him toward the kitchen. “Mysteries can wait until after we have pie. Got it?”

“If you insist,” Ford reluctantly agreed. 

When they got to the kitchen, there was, indeed, a warm apple pie cooling on the stove, and it smelled delicious—but when Soos called for his Abuelita, the house was silent.

“Abuelita?” Soos called. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll check downstairs,” Wendy said. “Soos, if she’s fallen, we may need to call—”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Wendy,” Ford said, staring out the window. “Soos, isn’t that your grandmother’s apron?”

They looked outside. A study yellow apron floated on the wind, suspended from the crooked branch of a pine tree. Soos ran outside immediately, plucking it from the air and holding it to his chest. There was no doubt. He stared into the empty woods.

“Abuelita!”

xXx

_Two weeks later…_

“The important thing is that we don’t panic,” Diabolus Darkdoom said, pacing the floor of his old headmaster’s office. “We need to keep our heads clear.”

Dr. Nero watched his friend’s nervous energy pinball from one end of the room to the other and back again. “I’m not panicking,” he said. “But it’s clear that she is missing.”

Darkdoom listed the facts again: “No ransom note, no body, no indication of trouble at her last stop.”

“We’ve already had three teams go over her intended route, and nothing,” Nero sighed. “She wouldn’t just disappear off the face of the earth like this. Either she would say something, or our enemies would.”

“Maybe she had to go underground,” Darkdoom suggested. “She can’t make contact because she’s in hiding. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with her mission. Perhaps it’s H.O.P.E. again.”

Nero frowned. “I have a bad feeling about this one, Diabolus. I’m worried it’s something else. Something we’ve never seen before.”

“Raven is the best G.L.O.V.E. has,” Darkdoom said. “If she’s in trouble, she’s more than capable of looking after herself.”

“Logically, I know that.” Nero straightened his cravat and looked at his map of the world, his gaze lingering on the Pacific northwest. “But I have to go look for her.”

“Max.”

“Is there any chance I could borrow your submarine?”

“First, _The Megalodon_ is more than a submarine, and second—

“You’re going on the submarine?” Both men started as they turned to see one Nigel Darkdoom standing in the middle of the room, clearly delighted that he had surprised them.

“We’re talking about a possible mission,” Darkdoom said. “We haven’t finished yet.”

Nigel looked between them both. “Is it because Raven’s missing?”

“Well, son, it’s more complicated than that—”

“Is it?”

Nero and Darkdoom glared at one another for a moment before turning their annoyance on the wallpaper. 

“Was there something you needed, Nigel?” Nero asked loftily.

“Some of the Henchman stream kids are holding Ms. Leon hostage in a locker in the men’s room and Colonel Francisco thought you should handle this personally,” Nigel said.

Nero leaned back on his desk, wishing that he had either a very nice Cuban cigar or his most terrifying assassin to get him through this, but, unfortunately, both were out of stock. 

“I’m going to go,” Nigel said quietly.

“Next time, lead with the important news,” his father called after him. 

Nero watched the door close behind Nigel with a sense of grim finality. 

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he sighed.

“Hm?”

“They’re all going to want to come, now.”


	2. City Kids

Otto Malpense stepped onto the ferry and took an exaggerated deep breath. “So,” he said cheerfully. “They say this is America. Nice place. Love what they’re doing with the trees.”

“Aye,” Laura said, hopping off the submarine after him. “I’ve seen loads of movies with America in them, and this place very nearly reminds me of them.”

“Indeed, it almost makes you believe that the United States is a real place,” Wing agreed, “and not just a well-maintained Hollywood conspiracy.”

“Har-dee-har-har-har,” Shelby said. She leaned against the starboard railing, eyeing her friends with no small amount of suspicion. With a few years at H.I.V.E. under her belt, Shelby had little need for a sense of patriotism in her life, but, as the only American in the group, she was keenly aware of the potential for her friends’ jibes to get very personal very quickly, and she intended to be ready for them. “You guys are _so_ funny.”

“What’s funny?” Nigel asked, hoisting himself out of _The Megalodon’_ s sail and joining them on deck. 

“Poor dear, she still thinks that America is real,” Laura explained. 

“Didn’t your mum and dad ever tell you?” Nigel gasped. “Mine told me when I was like, seven. There is no Santa Claus, there is no tooth fairy, and there is no United States of America.”

Shelby scoffed.

Franz, the last of their steadfast clique, frowned at Nigel with a serious expression. “Have a little sympathy, Nigel,” he said. “It is not her fault that she has been misinformed her entire life. What kind of cruel people wouldn’t tell their children the truth about America? It is practically being child abuse.”

Otto clapped Shelby on the shoulder. “Thoughts and prayers for you in this difficult time.”

“Gosh, thanks.” Shelby peacefully looked toward the horizon. Though she schooled her face to hide any annoyance she might be feeling, her friends knew they were getting her from the simple fact that she wasn’t joining in. Her friends glowed with their success.

“Well, I’m glad to see that we’re in high spirits,” Diabolus Darkdoom said. He and Dr. Nero were the last to disembark from the submarine and, joining the students, promptly failed to pick up on any lingering subtext from the previous conversation. Darkdoom took the helm of the ferry he had acquired for the mission. “And I believe for most of you this will be your first trip to America!”

“For all of us, actually,” Otto replied.

“Well, Nigel and I have actually been here together before,” Darkdoom said, frowning slightly. “Washington, D.C. and Atlanta.”

Nigel shook his head emphatically. “No, Dad. That’s just what the government wants you to think.”

“Diabolus, I think you should just drive,” Nero grumbled. “They’re being silly again.”

The journey inland took longer than one might expect—though the coastline was visible from their stop in the open sea, it still took a good forty-five minutes for Darkdoom to convey them inland, and longer than it should have for them to dock.

“There,” Darkdoom said, completing his third try. “Let’s tie ‘er up, folks.”

Laura shivered as she disembarked. “Are we sleeping on the submarine tonight? It’s going to be cold doing that in the dark.”

“You’ll live,” Nero said, at the same time Darkdoom said, “We’ll get a motel.”

They stared at one another. The students stared at them.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Darkdoom finished diplomatically. “Now let’s finish up, we haven’t the time to waste.”

In short order, the ship was moored, the students reassembled on shore, and two car keys were procured from Darkdoom’s breast pocket, one of which he tossed to Nero. A short hike up the sandy hill led them to a small, mostly empty parking lot. The students surveyed the cars, trying to guess which ones might be theirs: absolutely none of them looked cool.

“So, what exactly is our plan, sir?” Otto asked, turning to Dr. Nero. 

Nero met the gaze of each of his students and they unconsciously straightened their backs, the last of their smiles slipping away for a moment. Though they had shed their school uniforms for cargo pants and fleece, their training was a permanent piece in their ensembles.

“As you know, we’re here to learn anything we can about Raven. Diabolus and I have mapped two routes through town,” Nero said. “I’ll be taking the south side of town; he’ll take the north. Our first mission is reconnaissance—we’re looking for places Raven might have been, people who might be useful to us later. After our initial sweep, we will rendezvous at Greasy’s Diner and review our findings.

“I want you all to remember that we don’t know who—or what—we’re dealing with, yet. Even small towns have their secrets. Be careful when speaking to the locals. We don’t know who our friends are, yet.”

Otto elbowed Laura. “Aw, he thinks we’ll make friends here.”

Nero gave Otto a look, but said nothing. Instead, he looked to Darkdoom. “Greasy’s Diner, two hours?”

“Two hours.” Darkdoom shuffled his wallet and keys in his hands. “I gave you your ID, right?”

Nero’s smile became a little strained. “You did, yes. Do you still have yours?”

“I definitely do,” Darkdoom said. “You know me, I am very good at keeping track of important papers for short periods of time.”

“Yes,” Nero said, the expression on his face indicating that he was perhaps looking forward to driving in a different car than Darkdoom.

“Do we need a cover story, or anything like that?” Shelby asked, before the adults began to drift.

“No way,” Otto said. “This is America. Anything can happen here! Two men driving six kids they aren’t related to is a totally normal, believable, and, dare I say, relatable thing that happens here.”

“Or would be, if America were real,” Laura said. 

“Which it is not,” Franz finished. “In case you forgot.”

Darkdoom cleared his throat and, catching Nero’s attention, looked pointedly at Laura, Otto, and Franz, and then at Nero. _They’re going in your car._

Nero rolled his eyes. _Fine._ “Miss Trinity, if it comes up, you can say you are at a science-themed day camp for troubled youths.”

Otto’s mouth dropped in mock indignation. “You think we’re troubled?” 

“You’re going to be very troubled if you don’t make your way to the car right now,” Nero said. He clicked the fob on his key and a green minivan beeped in response. “Emphasis on _very,_ Mr. Malpense.”

For the first time since landing, Shelby smiled. 

“You,” Otto grumbled, noticing. “You enjoy other people’s suffering.”

“No,” Shelby said. “But would it surprise you to know that I’ve been to Gravity Falls, Otto? I think you might be in more trouble than you know.”

Everyone else stared at Shelby with a mixture of muted surprise and confusion.

“What?” Otto said.

“And you couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?” Darkdoom muttered to himself.

Shelby shrugged and began walking backwards, in the direction of Darkdoom’s banged-up SUV. “Watch your back! That’s all I’m saying.”

Silently, Darkdoom, Wing, and Nigel trailed after her.

“God,” Otto grumbled. “That was so ominous.”

Nero nodded in agreement. “Very ominous. Ms. Leon’s coaching is paying off better than I imagined.”

“Ominous means scary, right?” Franz asked.

“Think of it like this, Otto,” Laura said, sliding open the minivan’s door. “Maybe with practice, you can be ominous, too.”

xXx

Dipper could hear the Mystery Shack before he could see it. The screen door slammed into its frame. An engine backfired along the road. If he concentrated, he thought he could hear the TV. They were the quintessential sounds of home—still, Dipper lingered along the path, preoccupied with the curdling dread in the pit of his stomach. Coming home meant another day of admitting defeat. He hadn’t found a single clue. 

The facts were these: two weeks ago, after a typically industrious morning of cleaning and pie-baking, Soos’s abuelita had left the house, hung up her apron on a pine branch, and walked into the forest, never to be seen again. Her footprints ended some fifty yards beyond the tree line, though Dipper hadn’t been able to look at them himself. The old woman was the tenth person to have disappeared in the woods without a trace. Soos was inconsolable. 

That was it. All the facts. They hadn’t learned a single scrap of information since then. 

No one had given up hope, yet. The town had already organized a number of search-and-rescue operations, mostly led by the Corduroys and the sheriff’s office. There was a HAVE YOU SEEN ME? poster on every telephone pole in the county. And Dipper, too, had spent the last few days in the woods searching for anything that might be a lead. His efforts were equally frustrated.

Dipper climbed the back porch and took a deep breath. The worst part of coming home was the disappointment, but there was no way around it. He took a deep breath and walked inside.

“I’m home!” he called. 

“We’re in the den!” Mabel, his sister, answered. 

He found the whole family occupied therein. His Grunkle Stan had the television on, though, upon seeing Dipper, he powered it off. Ford had spread a large map of Gravity Falls over the floor and scrawled notes over this landmark and that with a large, red marker.

“Notes?” Ford demanded.

Dipper handed Ford his journal as he inched past, doing his best not to step on the paper. He had little to report, but his great uncle was meticulous about recording every scrap of data at their disposal. Both uncles watched as Dipper approached the table at the far end of the room. 

“Hey, man,” Dipper said, sliding into a free chair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t find anything.”

Soos slumped at the head of the table, his eyes still puffy and red. Mabel sat at his elbow. Normally, she was the self-appointed morale officer in their home, but Soos was beyond consolation, and she knew it. She set her hand on Soos’s; Soos seemed not to notice.

“It’s okay, Dipper,” Soos said, his voice nearly achieving an emotionless calm. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Dipper and Mabel looked at one another, silently agreeing to allow this fragile hope a place at the table. At some point their fierce hopefulness would slide into the realm of false hopefulness—and considering that the first disappearance was more than a month ago, perhaps that point had already passed. But they still held on. They had to.

“Grenda’s mom sent us another casserole,” Mabel said. “I think I’ll pop it in the oven. In case anyone’s hungry.”

Soos stared at the table, his mind somewhere beyond their hearing. Dipper shrugged and waved Mabel on, taking her place at his side.

“Your notes say that you visited the gnomes’ bar today,” Ford spoke up. “No one there could tell you something?”

“There was no one there, period,” Dipper replied. “In fact, I haven’t run into any supernatural creatures in any of my expeditions. It’s getting pretty weird.”

“That is weird,” Ford agreed. “Maybe tomorrow I should go out with you. We’ll cover more ground that way.”

“No, Grunkle Ford. You should really let your knee rest up before you do any more hiking. Maybe tomorrow Mabel can go with me.”

Stan coughed. “Not to be a downer, kid, but your sister doesn’t exactly have the best sense of direction. We wouldn’t want a repeat of last summer.”

“Yeah,” Dipper sighed. Privately, he thought, _I could use the help, though._

xXx

It took all of thirty minutes to drive through every cross-street on the south side of town. Franz, Laura, and Otto looked out the windows as the storefronts began to repeat themselves, musing on their unique boredoms. In the driver’s seat, Nero kept his eyes on the road. Beethoven’s sixth symphony played on the radio; he had been adamant that no one would get to sit shotgun.

And so they drove.

“I wonder what Shelby meant,” Otto thought out loud. “That she’d been here before.”

Laura hummed in sympathetic confusion. “Is she from Oregon? I thought she wasn’t.”

“You are being her best friend, so that does not give me a lot of confidence in our collective knowledge,” Franz replied.

“I am like, 95% sure she is from California,” Otto said. “But I don’t think I asked. Dr. Nero, you’ve seen her student record. She’s from California, right?”

“Those are classified,” Nero said, “and you don’t have clearance.”

Otto made a rude face at the back of Nero’s head, but did not argue. 

“Maybe we’re bad friends,” Laura said. “Do you think we’re bad friends?”

“No way. She’s a bad friend for not telling us.”

“Plus, it has never come up,” Franz added. “Because you all were finding out about Nigel and me and where we were from on the first day of school on account of our fathers, and then we did not really talk about Wing being born in China and raised in Tokyo until his father died for the first time, and then Laura would just not think to keep that kind of information to herself because she is so trusting—”

“Hey!”

“Which really means that only you and Shelby are having the mysterious pasts, Otto,” Franz concluded, ignoring Laura’s deep glare.

“I’m from London,” Otto said.

Franz shook his head. “But where are you _really_ from? Will we ever know? Maybe your parents were important supervillains who had to give you up to keep you safe from their life of crime. Or, maybe, you are secretly a mutant born with superpowers to help save the world. If so, who are they? Why did they do it?”

“Psssh, that’s ridiculous.” Otto forced a laugh. “I think you’ve read too many comic books.”

“Have I?” Franz said, resting his round face in his palm and convicting Otto with the one-two punch of a piercing gaze and a knowing smile. “Because you seem nervous.”

Otto folded his arms, lifting his eyes to the van’s drab felt ceiling. “Absolutely not. I have definitely not received any new information that is pertinent to my backstory in the last few months, and even if I did, it definitely would not have permanent implications for my sense of self and belonging. That’s very far-fetched, Franz.”

“Maybe,” Nero interrupted, “we should do less talking with our mouths and more looking with our eyes.”

“You’re halfway through circling the town for the second time, Dr. Nero,” Laura said. “Are you sure this is where Raven went missing? This town is so small.”

“Yeah, if I were going to write a high-stakes action-adventure narrative featuring the disappearance of a deadly assassin amid a subdued political drama, I’d expect the story to take place somewhere big and important like New York City,” Otto agreed. “Or even a place people think is important, like Area 51 or something.”

Franz studied his fingernails. “Even a somewhat unconvincing military base situated within blasting distance of the second most-populous city in Colorado would be more believable than small-town Oregon.”

Nero enunciated through gritted teeth. “Oh, look, a turn in the road. Let’s see what we find, shall we?”

Wooden signs of enthusiastic shape and size loomed on both sides of the unpaved road. One proclaimed, PREPARE FOR THE UNKNOWN. One beyond announced, AMAZEMENTS AND WONDERS GALORE. Another said, NO REFUNDS.

In a few minutes, a lone house with a roof like a steeple came into view. 

“Mystery Shack,” Laura read aloud. 

“Mystery Hack, you mean,” Otto teased, pointing out the fallen “S” from the sign.

“One or the other,” Franz said. “Can we go inside?”

Nero inhaled slowly. “We do have a mystery on our hands—I suppose we may as well start here.”

xXx

Mabel lingered on the porch, allowing herself a few moments of melancholy before the timer on the casserole went off. She had promised herself that she was going to be strong for Soos, and Mabel kept her promises. There would be absolutely no tears! Not even one! Which was why, even on the privacy of the porch, she did not allow herself to cry.

Everything was different this year.

It wasn’t just Abuelita’s disappearance, although that mystery occupied their thoughts the most. Gravity Falls simply felt different this year—or, she worried, she was the one who had changed. 

She tried not to think about it. Last summer, and the simmering weight of late evening. When she had walked in the forest, the world had been hers. The freedom of girlhood was as implicit in Mabel’s character as her devotion to her pig, Waddles. And then she had met the rumplestiltskin. When she left the woods, she was not free anymore. 

Dipper and her grunkles were, of course, doing their best to help her, but the phrase “unbreakable curse” did not give Mabel a lot of hope. She kept her worries to herself, though. No reason to stir them up over nothing.

“So what if you’re cursed forever and always?” Mabel asked, in an effort to pep herself up. “You are the light of your family’s lives and you’re not going to stop just because of one bad thing! Or two bad things, if you count Abuelita going missing. Yeah! Something like that.”

Still, the forest gave her shivers down the back of her spine in a way that it hadn’t before, but Mabel was a master of distracting herself. An old green minivan trundled up the gravel pathway.

“Grunkle Stan!” she bellowed. “Customers!”

“Finally!” Stan materialized beside Mabel, spinning his cane through his fingers with that corny old grin on his face. “Step right up, folks! Come and tour the Mystery Shack!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there will be roasts for Gravity Falls later when everything is not so depressing <3


End file.
